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Justices: Can't make employers cover contraception

MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

Updated:
06/30/2014 11:56:05 AM EDT

A demonstrator holds up a sign outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 30, 2014. The Supreme Court is poised to deliver its verdict in a case that weighs the religious rights of employers and the right of women to the birth control of their choice. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Local reaction

Nicole Lindemyer, community education director with ACCESS-York and the Victim Assistance Center, said she was very disappointed and troubled by today's Supreme Court ruling.

"This is scream out the window in outrage kind of stuff," Lindemyer said. "We're talking about basic human rights to preventative care that aren't being met."

Lindemyer said it's one thing to protect the individual rights of an person, but to "pretend a corporation has a conscience" is a trend she is troubled to see.

"Why in 2014 are we still fighting for access to birth control?" she said.

Many of the women who come through the doors at ACCESS-York and the Victims Assistance Center and women in low income homes who cannot afford or want a child, Lindemyer said. For some of the women, they are in abusive relationships and are making steps to get out, she added.

Lindemyer said she wants women to be reassured that the Affordable Care Act is in full support of protecting a woman's right to choose not to have children, or to plan when she will have children.

"If you are a woman who cares about your basic rights, don't work for Hobby Lobby," she said.

For others, today's ruling was seen as a victory.

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"In its decision in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Products cases, the Court properly concluded that religious conscience of closely held businesses is to be protected from government coercion," according to a statement from the Diocese of Harrisburg.

"Religious ministries of service - such as charities, schools, health care facilities and institutions of higher education - are given, at best, second-class status under the law in the form of a still-murky 'accommodation.' Many religious entities, including Catholic dioceses, are challenging this mandate in federal courts across the country."

The Catholic Bishops of Pennsylvania hope the Obama Administration "will do the right thing" and withdraw the mandate as it has been applied to religious ministries, the release states. The Church believes that step will assure that "statutory and constitutional protections would not be trampled."

National report

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that some corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.

The justices' 5-4 decision is the first time that the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law. And it means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under objecting companies' health insurance plans.

Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the health care law that President Barack Obama signed in 2010 and the Supreme Court upheld two years later.

Two years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts cast the pivotal vote that saved the health care law in the midst of Obama's campaign for re-election.

On Monday, dealing with a small sliver of the law, Roberts sided with the four justices who would have struck down the law in its entirety.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

The court stressed that its ruling applies only to corporations that are under the control of just a few people in which there is no essential difference between the business and its owners.

Alito also said the decision is limited to contraceptives under the health care law. "Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs," Alito said.

He suggested two ways the administration could ensure women get the contraception they want. It could simply pay for pregnancy prevention, he said.

Or it could provide the same kind of accommodation it has made available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations. Those groups can tell the government that providing the coverage violates their religious beliefs. At that point, the groups' insurers or a third-party administrator takes on the responsibility of paying for the birth control.

The accommodation is the subject of separate legal challenges, but the court said Monday that the profit-seeking companies could not assert religious claims in such a situation.

The administration said a victory for the companies would prevent women who work for them from making decisions about birth control based on what's best for their health, not whether they can afford it. The government's supporters pointed to research showing that nearly one-third of women would change their contraceptive if cost were not an issue; a very effective means of birth control, the intrauterine device, can cost up to $1,000.

The contraceptives at issue before the court were the emergency contraceptives Plan B and ella, and two IUDs.

Nearly 50 businesses have sued over covering contraceptives. Some, like those involved in the Supreme Court case, are willing to cover most methods of contraception, as long as they can exclude drugs or devices that the government says may work after an egg has been fertilized. Other companies object to paying for any form of birth control.

There are separate lawsuits challenging the contraception provision from religiously affiliated hospitals, colleges and charities.

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 85 percent of large American employers already had offered such coverage before the health care law required it.

It is unclear how many women potentially are affected by the high court ruling. The Hobby Lobby chain of arts-and-crafts stores is by far the largest employer of any company that has gone to court to fight the birth control provision.

Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby has more than 15,000 full-time employees in more than 600 crafts stores in 41 states. The Greens are evangelical Christians who also own Mardel, a Christian bookstore chain.

The other company is Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. of East Earl, Pa., owned by a Mennonite family and employing 950 people in making wood cabinets.